Indonesia - Incredible fried chicken!!

Yogyakarta-style fried chicken is the BEST I’d tried anywhere in Asia, if not the world! The chicken was first par-boiled in Javanese spices, before being coated in batter (tapioca flour?) then deep-fried. During the last phase of deep-frying, the cook will also add a ladleful of tapioca flour on top of the chicken, resulting in a porous, crispy, golden crust blanketing the chicken. Utterly sinful, totally, mind-blowingly delicious!

Our lunch today consisted of:

- “Ayam goreng” - 3 whole deep-fried free-range chickens;

- Grilled gurame freshwater fish which had been basted with kecap manis (sweet dark soysauce) which was also incredibly tasty;

- Fried tempe (fermented soybean cake);

- Stir-fried pete (stink-beans).

Definitely a must-not miss place if one is ever in Indonesia – Ayam Goreng Yogyakarta is a well-known restaurant, but one can also look for the other famous chains like Ayam Goreng Ny. Suharti and Ayam Goreng Mbok Berek with outlets throughout Indonesia's major cities (Jakarta, Surabaya, etc.)

They used "ayam kampung" - small free-range chickens which yielded intense-flavored meat, a must for ayam goreng. There's a parboiling process which I think would have softened the chickens' claws/feet, so during the deep-frying process, the claws/feet partially disintegrated?

And yes, pete (pronounced "puh-tay" in Indonesia) = petai. The East Javanese simply stir-fried the pete beans lightly in oil, and serve them with a small saucer of salt on the side. My fave petai dish is Malaysian-Nyonya style - stir-fried with sambal chilli, assam juice and prawns.

Well, in honor of the petai-sambal dish, as well as the long beans-aubergines-angle beans-okra-sambal belacan dish you described the other day, tonight I made a simple stir-fry of long beans (cut up) and aubergines (sliced) with sambal terasi & shrimp paste w/ bean oil and loads of chopped garlic. Yum. (Ate it w/ white rice w/ lap cheong steamed in it; plus chiffonade of collards in chicken stock)